For the Want of A Coin
by The Ardent Warrior-Poet
Summary: John had always known what he could do, if given a challenge. He'd known his capabilities ever since he'd been a child, let alone a SPARTAN. But now, after surviving a trip he honestly shouldn't have, he's stuck on a planet with no orders, no manual, and no amount of training that could've prepared him for the situation he's now faced with... a Mindoir farm girl named Shepard.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing**

**For the Want of A Coin **

_**A Question of Time, Space, and a Ball of Slippery Strings **_

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_"...much as the many different forms for DNA provide for the abundant variety of life on earth, so the many different forms for the extra dimensions may provide for the abundant variety of universes populating a string-based multiverse."_

‒Brian Greene, excerpt from his book _The Hidden Reality_; 2011

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_"...The other dimensions may be microscopic in size (or otherwise difficult to penetrate) and crumpled up in a funky shape known as a Calabi-Yau space. The Observable universe may be on a membrane, or simply a "brane," sitting at the tip of a spike (what physicists calls a "throat") or composing part of a membrane wrapped around teacuplike handles."_

‒Cliff Burgess and Fernando Quevedo; excerpt from Scientific American;_ The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride_; November, 2007

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[Interviewer]:

_"Although Drs. Shaw and Fujikawa remain unavailable for comment at this time, their lead publicist and amateur physicist Rob _**[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]** _had this to say in our interview about the history-making experiment:_

_"...you have to imagine the third dimension as any point in mathematical construct we call space-time. It helps to think of the latter as a giant rubber sheet. Our planet is just a point on that sheet, a tiny indentation rolling around the indentation of a vastly larger point ‒ our sun. Now, to get from one point to the next, you must cross the "span" in between, space and time. And believe me, when talking about spans in the interplanetary and stellar sense, we're talking about a lot of space and time to travel, a century or more at the very least. The goal then becomes a matter of circumventing the span altogether, which we have done with the _Translight Engine_. By harnessing the immense power of decaying micro-singularities, we have found a way to _fold_ space-time in such a way as to _slip_ between the texture of the rubber sheet (space-time) into higher dimensions."_

[Interviewer]:

_[Looking confused] _

_"Sounds impressive, Rob. But tell me, you mentioned the seventh dimension earlier... What do you mean when you say you slip into higher dimensions?"_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

"_The Engine creates a wormhole with seventh dimensional properties. Imagine this, we know that the first three dimensions are length, width, and height. And while you could be forgiven in assuming from popular theory that the fourth dimension is _'time,' _please note that it doesn't matter what you call it so long as you acknowledge that it exists at 90 degree right angles from the third dimension. Because no dimension exists in isolation from those 'below' or 'above' it, the fourth dimension builds off of the lower three dimensions by means of entropy, or change; to draw a line you need points, to draw a plane you need lines, to build a cube you need planes, and to move in four dimensions you need the infinite increments of change that are produced from start to finish, from beginning to end. It's weird, I know, to think about but time has a spatial element._

_"Moving on, the fifth dimension gets pretty tricky to think about but assume that for every choice made, for every action taken, its opposite has occurred as well. Like a branches of a cosmic tree, every change produces changes of its own, which then create new branches, ad infinitum. All of these varying choices and changes occur parallel to what we assume to be our _timeline_. We can't the fifth dimension from our current reference point but we know that it's there due to its effect upon our daily lives. We assume that our universe resides in the third dimension plus time. What we've found through the experiment of the Translight Engine is that we actually reside in _five dimensions_: length, width, height, time, and finally _probability_._ _Every choice matters because it shifts our own timeline further along a branching series of infinite choice."_

[Interviewer]:

_"That's pretty unreal, honestly..." _

_[Forced laugh]_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

_[Laughing] _

_"Quite. As we move higher into the sixth dimension, we come to realize that our example of a universe of infinite probability is just _one of many_ other universes, each with their own infinite probabilities starting from the initial conditions of the Big Bang."_

[Interviewer]:

_"Wait, wait, wait... hold on... You're talking about web-comic strips, right? Many-Worlds Theory and Infinite Earths?"_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

"_Yes, but only in the sense that the initial conditions that they all share begin, and end, with the Big Bang. Once that occurred, everything changes... and I do mean everything. The Translight Engine takes advantage of this 'many worlds' concept by actually _riding_ along the waveform of this phase space. But, because the waveform ebbs and flows like the tides of the ocean ‒ the result of the fluctuations produced by universes being created and raw probability ‒ the sixth dimension can be considered "extremely slippery."_

[Interviewer]:

_"..."_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

_"Are you still with me? We now come to the final dimension, the meat and potatoes of Dr. Shaw and Fujikawa's experiment. The seventh dimension builds off the sixth by breaking every known law in physics."_

[Interviewer]:

_"I would say that you've lost me at this point but I'm still playing catch up after the fifth dimension."_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

_[Chuckling, he winks] _

_"And that is what makes the Translight Engine the most important invention of the millennium! We literally can now travel to a _multiverse_ with different laws of time and physics. If we assume that in our multiverse ‒ our branch of a sixth dimensional probability chain in an infinite sea of universes, each starting with the six basic physical laws that started with the Big Bang ‒time is measured in increments of 1 second, then we can assume that in another multiverse, time is measured in increments of 1.5 seconds. Or 3.87 seconds. Or even in 0.0000000001 seconds! The Engine rides a sixth dimensional sea through the seventh dimension, through a different set of physical rules, thus making a hypothetical 10,000 light-year trip possible in a matter of years or months! Once we manage to _improve _this technology, there may come a point when we can travel from one end of the Milky Way to the other in a day, or even a couple of hours or so. The possibilities are literally ‒ seventh-dimensionally ‒ infinite."_

[Interviewer]:

_"So what you're saying is that Drs. Shaw and Fujikawa found a way to travel faster than light by..."_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

_"By breaking the laws of physics, yes." _

_[He nods]_

[Interviewer]:

_[Looking pale] _

_"...Don't you think that creating something that does all of that sound a little irresponsible? What would happen if something went wrong while a ship was... doing all of that you just explained?"_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

_[Looking thoughtful] _

_"Well, I suppose a lot could theoretically happen mid-transit. I suppose if a ship didn't have enough lead shielding, the Cherenkov radiation from the reactor could cause problems. And it stands to reason that dimensional fluctuations could occur depending on where the singularity was formed. And you certainly wouldn't want to activate the Engine in an atmosphere, provided that you could even do so with all the gravitational pollution. But really, now, the Translight Engine is a prototype at present. And it works, too, quite reliably I would emphasize. _

_"Supposing that the proper precautions were taken, what's the worst that could happen?"_

[Interviewer]:

_[Deadpan] _

_"In a nuclear-driven ship that creates black holes which rip open the multiverse and breaks all known laws of physics?"_

Rob **[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN‒ONI]**:

_[Looking offended] _

_"The Unified Earth Government asked two geniuses to find and open a path to the stars. They never said anything about keeping reality intact!"_

‒ Excerpt of transcript from Web-NEWS interview with Rob**[CLASSIFIED/UNSCN] **by _Earth Science Monthly_ writer, Ashley Williams; both subjects were taken into UNSCN custody for debriefing shortly after interview; all works confiscated under UNSC authority. **[HIGHCOM/ONI‒CODEWORD "STARBURST"]**; April, 2291.

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Logging User Out...

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‒End Chapter‒

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A/N: This will be my first foray into the wonder that is Mass Effect/Halo fan fiction. Concerning this chapter, I wanted to really look at the mechanics Bungie and 343 Industries put together when referring to, and dealing with, Slipstream Space. Considering that when talking about 7th dimensional manipulation, one delves into the deep end of advanced mathematical theory, I'd figure I'd touch on the highlights and attempt to show just what I thought when I first read _The Fall of Reach_, years and years ago. Anyway, consider this Author's Note both a greeting to this particular Crossover fandom as well as a warning: Everything after the _Halo_ timeline date 2527 subject to change.

We are going to be dealing with multiple dimensions after all, and hopefully this chapter sets it up quite nicely.

Also, for those of you wanting to know more about Robert [Classified] Bryanton. Look up his youtube videos on "Imagining the 10th Dimension" or check out his book by the same name. He will definitely teach you all about the techno-babble here.

I hope you enjoy!


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